Danae’s POV
The bark bit into my shoulder blades.
I pressed closer, deeply and stupidly grateful that Eirwen had mentioned wind direction before I’d wandered out here alone.
Werewolves tracked scent the way I tracked a conversation—without thinking, instinctively.
The evening breeze moved west to east across the lawn, carrying away from me and toward the treeline.
I was safe.
For now.
“Caspian, please…” The woman’s voice drifted toward me, half-swallowed by distance but clear enough that the desperation in it landed with precision.
“We make sense together.
What happened last week that suddenly changed your mind?”
I stopped breathing.
“Besides you fucking Duke at the hotel?” Caspian’s voice came from the direction of the stone path—cold, measured, and utterly without anger.
Which was somehow worse.
Anger would at least have meant he felt something.
I flattened myself tighter against the oak.
I had been here first.
The private garden tucked at the east edge of the Jorah property was the one place I’d found where I could sit without a pack member materializing to watch me.
I hadn’t known they were coming.
I hadn’t chosen to become an audience.
But here I was.
“It was only that one time,” the woman—Ciara, I would learn her name later—pleaded.
“And you know very well I gave you my first.”
A hot flush crawled up my neck.
I stared at the textured bark six inches from my face and thought about absolutely anything else.
My father’s medication schedule.
The waiting room at the hospital.
Whether this blouse needed dry-cleaning.
“It’s over, Ciara.” The words landed like a door closing.
“The Luna of the Ashmoon can only bear one man’s mark.”
Luna.
I recalled Eirwen explaining that once, in the careful way she talked about pack hierarchy—like she was handing someone a live wire and hoping they’d hold it gently.
The Alpha’s mate.
The female pack leader.
A position, not just a title.
“Give me another chance.”
“I’m leaving now.” And from the first syllable I could tell he meant it.
“You’d best not show your face around me again, or I’ll have Beta Garrick deal with it.”
Footsteps on gravel.
Coming this direction.
I tucked myself behind the thicker arc of the trunk, heart slamming against my ribs, and held completely still.
He passed perhaps four feet away, his back a wall of dark fabric moving through the dusk, unhurried as a man with nowhere he’d rather be.
Then he stopped.
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
One short pulse against my hip—completely inaudible to any human ear.
I watched Caspian’s shoulders.
They didn’t move.
On the path behind him, Ciara’s heels snapped against the stone as she turned and walked the other way, shoulders rigid.
“Eavesdropping,” Caspian said, turning to face my tree with absolute precision, “is an interesting hobby.”
His deep blue eyes found mine immediately, as if I were lit from inside.
I hadn’t made a sound.
I’d been completely still, completely behind the trunk.
And then I remembered he wasn’t human.
I stepped out from behind the oak, because what else was there to do.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” I said, injecting as much dignity into the words as they’d hold.
“I was here first.
Actually.”
The corner of his mouth curved.
Not quite a smile—more like the ghost of amusement on a face that didn’t let amusement show often.
“Quite brave for a human.” He tilted his head, and in the low evening light his eyes were the color of deep water.
“Especially standing on my pack’s territory.”
I lifted my chin.
“I’m stating facts.
And I won’t be here much longer—as soon as I find work, I’m leaving the city.”
He took a step toward me.
I took one back, my shoulder blades finding the oak again, the familiar bark solid and grounding behind me.
“Let me go,” I said.
“I need to get back.”
He reached out, fingers circling my arm—not hard, barely there, but precise.
An encirclement rather than a grip.
I’ll drive you.”
“That’s not necessary.” I tried to step around him.
The strange current that ran up my arm from the point of contact was absolutely not the reason I stopped moving.
“Danae.” He said my name the way he always did—like it was something he’d thought about for a while before deciding to say out loud.
Like it cost him something to let it go.
It made me turn before I meant to.
His mouth found mine.
No announcement.
No lean-in.
Just the sudden electric fact of his lips against mine, and the world went sideways in a way that had nothing to do with wine I hadn’t had.
I pulled back, gasping, and realized my fingers had found his lapel without my knowledge.
“What…
what was that?”
His eyes had darkened—the blue deepening, pupils blown wide in the fading light.
He didn’t answer.
He simply leaned in again, and the rational part of me that had been cataloguing his flaws and his arrogance and his impossible propositions went very, very quiet.
The second kiss was different.
Slower.
More deliberate.
It found something inside me that had been coiled tight for weeks and let it go—all the grief and humiliation and stubborn-spined survival that had been my daily currency since the night before my wedding.
For one moment, none of it existed.
There was only the warmth of his breath and the impossible patience in the way he held back, as though he had all the time in the world, as though he was certain I wasn’t going anywhere.
I was furious to discover he was right.
“Such a pure scent,” he murmured against my ear, the words more felt than heard.
Before I could form any coherent objection, I was airborne—his arms under me, carrying me with an ease that suggested my weight was irrelevant.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Taking you to my car.” His stride was unhurried and absolutely certain.
“It’s more comfortable there.”
A pause.
“I can’t wait any longer.”